Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Communication

What a Picture is Worth

Audio Recordings / tagged Communication, Intimacy / December 2, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A picture
is worth a thousand words
but less than half a whisper

Image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay

This Times a Thousand

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Communication, Frustration, Misunderstanding, Sadness / November 29, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

What I wanted to say
was that words can't say
what I was wanting to say

There are languages
that I do not know
that say it in pictures

Maybe if I learned a few
I could finally say to you

Or fail a thousand times as sadly

Punctuation

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Certainty, Communication, Questions / August 21, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Benny Anderson
the great Danish poet writes
of bending question marks
into exclamation points

But should there be
a squiggly mark halfway between
to denote some lingering doubt
before re-posting it out

Word Divisions

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / tagged Communication / August 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You can know your native language
and still feel all alone
as pilots talk to pilots
in a code that’s all their own

Yet not even one to one
can they share that love of air
or touch the other’s feelings
of the fear and beauty there

Sailors talk to sailors
of wind and sail and rope
of nights upon the ocean
of courage and of hope

Yet the words just can’t convey
their love of sea and air
nor touch the other’s feelings
of the fear and beauty there

And though cowboys talk to cowboys
in a special kind of drawl
there’s still a space between them
the words can’t tell at all

Not those nights of cold and stars
with coyotes on the air
nor the call of open spaces
with the fear and beauty there

Watch as lovers talk to lovers
in ways only two can share
as they build between them
a framework light and fair

While a web that’s spun of maybes
hangs so fragile in the air
that one false word can shatter
into pain, the beauty there

And yet

There are still some crazy poets
out riding hatless in the sun
still trying to do the very thing
we all know can’t be done

Still Quixoting for a language
that can speak to everyone

1 Reply

The Girls Had an Edge

Audio Recordings, Family, Ranch Life / tagged Communication, Connection / July 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Me and my brothers
had tractors and trucks and such
you can't talk to tractors and trucks

Sisters with in strollers
had friends always happy
to see the world through their eyes

Round Tables

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Communication, Father / June 16, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

He loved his neighbours, but not out loud
(Only by default could we tell if he was proud men did not hug their friends or children then)

There were no women in the bar
and all the tables round and small
heavy with ashtray and pilsner draft
where they talked code til closing time

Politics of any stripe meant you are my brother
The weather, whatever the weather meant I love you too

Questions for the Next Séance

Audio Recordings, Family / tagged Communication, Curiosity, Death, Heaven, Regrets / May 11, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Dearest Mother;

Sorry to disturb you
in your well deserved bliss,
but here’s a short list
of things that I forgot to ask

And if it isn’t too much trouble
I’d like the answers as detailed as possible

It will be understandable
if you can’t conjure up a voice,
but one rap for yes, and two for no,
on a floating table won’t quite do

However, if you can look up Samuel Morse,
(who may well be bored and available),
he can give you a quick-study course
and I will dust off my old Boy Scout manual

I believe “talk to me” In Morse still becomes:

-/•-/•-••/-•- /— – – –/––•

So, now that we’ve got the hang of it;

– What was the best day of your life
– What was your worst
– Your greatest triumph
– Your greatest disappointment
– What you are happiest that you did
– Saddest that you didn’t

Why exactly did my uncle shoot my dog
Whatever happened to my baseball card collection, with the rookie Mickey Mantle

and what is heaven like

A Poem in Search of a Verb

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Anger, Communication, Impact, Language / February 17, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A verb like zischeln
German for: to whisper angrily

A verb to punch above its weight
A poem to know you
right out of the left side of the bed

Breathing in Winter

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Communication, Regret / December 18, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

1 Reply

That Conversation

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Relationships, Travel / tagged Communication, Connection / December 3, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Met in a resort hotel
across the peninsula from Athens
a retired ship owner who had just returned
from speaking at a conference in Delphi
on magic in the modern world

He talked about Delphi having been a library
where people gathered knowledge
before asking the oracle for the spirit side

He said Dorsey and I had to go to Delos and why

He said sometimes you have this conversation
and held his hands about hands-width apart
and sometimes you have this conversation
with hands as far apart as a fisherman’s lie

We had that conversation

This Thanksgiving I sat with John Lee
fellow poet fellow traveler on so many trails

We had that conversation - Hope you have many too

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Ken Christopher on Bull LowDecember 20, 2024
Yep, that truck didn’t need brass balls hanging off it to tell you who it was, or want to be
Ken Christopher on Away From The BuildingsDecember 18, 2024
Oh yes, and I would love to know the whole story behind that
Ken on All They SurveyDecember 17, 2024
I totally get that, a sense of belonging; a meditation on what is, an extension of himself out into the…
Ken Christopher on The Re-Cremation of Sam McGeeDecember 11, 2024
Great title: re-cremation/re-creatiion
Ken Christopher on Not in Kansas AnymoreDecember 10, 2024
You’re in a roll‼️

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